More Murder and Added Feminism

Ann Hansen, who inspired Blow Off 

The strange matter of the Jazz Club Murder still unsettles me. I was charmed by many of its salient features, such as the live singing (any rendition of a spiritual will calm my aching soul) or the familiarity of the amateur and very English sleuth. Yet to come upon something that resembled a version of ‘the well made play’, which dominated British theatre before John Osbourne dragged theatre away from the bourgeois drawing room into the (admittedly mannered) working class kitchen sink, shocked me more than a full-bloodied version of Seneca’s Thyestes (a happening all the more likely in a time when Titus Andronicus is vying for status at the top of the Shakespeare hierarchy).

The same day, I saw AJ Taudevin’s Blow Off, which climaxed in a big explosion, like the one at the end of Fight Club. Taudevin’s work-in-progress boasted a punk aesthetic (mentions of Bikini Kill and Howie Reeves rocking the bass guitar), and followed a story that included brutal beatings and an anti-capitalist conscience. While neither Murder nor Blow Off satisfied Aristotle’s definitions of tragedy – Taudevin’s emphasis on character over plot tipped it away from a definitive catharsis – the two plays represent the extremes of contemporary Scottish performance. On the one hand, a polite nostalgia: on the other, a restlessly personal and political dynamism.

It’s dichotomies like this that make the life of a critic in a post-modern age so problematic. There are no real movements in theatre any more, nothing that can be said to be of this moment in history. Taudevin referenced Bikini Kill and other 1990s music: Runcie flipped back to the golden age of jazz. Beneath these surface references are deeper affinities to tradition: Taudevin evokes agit-prop theatre in her format (the monologue and music, the explicitly political content); Runcie goes for a 1950s atmosphere and detective story reveal.

Equally, one play does not comment on the other – both imply a spirit of nostalgia, even ironic distance – unless Taudevin is making a direct appeal for more terrorist actions on businesses. And neither work is unnecessary, or unwanted. They provide their audiences with a level of emotional release, either into fantasies of rebellion, or a time long ago when even murder could be solved by goodwill and British determination.

Neither play deserves to be condemned: indeed, Taudevin is clearly striving towards an emotional theatre that places it at the heart of public debate about the tyranny of big corporations and broken idealism. But my problem may lie at the heart of contemporary theatre itself: does it know what it is supposed to do any more? Is it merely entertainment? Should it have a serious intention? And since the past bears so heavily on the present, is there any way forward for the original voice?

Of course, the real philosophical action these days isn't in theatre: it’s in the ceaseless debate about whether Miley ought to keep her pants on when she is swinging about in pop videos. I've had a crack at that one: unfortunately, my sarcastic response was written before Miley mocked Sinead O’Connor’s mental health. It’s a measure of how alienated the discussion has become, that it didn't immediately end there: whatever the importance of Miley’s conduct on a symbolic level (either liberation or degradation), the moment it became personal, a far more crucial issue was at stake. Real human beings were being insulted. Even if Sinead had set herself up as a symbol (of old school feminist dignity), she did not deserve to have her mental illness held up to ridicule.

Theatre, possibly, has represented both the heights of human creativity and the potential for public discourse to be given an imaginative, artistic forum. Blow Off is striving towards this aim, Jazz Club Murders doesn't seem to be – its morality is so obvious as to be beneath discussion. But there are comparisons between the two that are intriguing. Both lean on music to provide an emotional depth to the script. Both rely heavily on the main character, and a single, determined narrative voice. The chasm between their styles occludes a set of shared assumptions, and both are concerned with building a contemporary theatre through the debris of the past.

I flicker through my thoughts, determining nothing: which play is better? It depends on the demands of the audience. 

Arches Live (Day 1)

Having spent the last three Arches Live! as a performer, I felt uncomfortable slipping back into my traditional role. My critiques will now be vulnerable to the traditional artist's retort - the critic is, indeed, the failed artist. Having had a crack at intimate theatre, the chat show and a post-modern version of the script (containing plenty about how much I love myself), I step back into the arena wondering whether I could have been more ambitious.

However, I am back on safe ground, and can begin with my annual appeal. Arches Live is not a festival that welcomes the classic review format. Even for those shows which deserve to be in the running for awards at the end of the season, a positive, star-rated review is not the point. The spirit of Arches Live is in experimentation, and it has a supportive audience, many of them fellow performers. It has the spirit of a graduate conference, in which researchers present a few findings.

Bearing this in mind, Adam Scarborough was reporting on the thin line between student pranks (he had his haircut in the city centre), political engagement and the way that politics has become an aesthetic performance. Steve Slater (the father of Criticulous, although he denies it) nipped into outer space and an alternative reality. Opera Breve took the logic of Scottish Opera's 5:15 programme to its logical conclusion.

Opera Breve's One Day This Will Be Long Ago is a fifteen minute burst of serious singing sensuality. Although it reduces the operatic duet to a series of leading phrases, and never clarifies the relationship between the man and woman pacing around the kitchen table, it uses the intensity of the operatic voice (and the musicians behind the curtain) to marry the immediacy of live art and the technique of high art. The couple are clearly stuck in a moment that they can never escape - the fragmented memories are so mundane, they appear to hide all sorts of intense emotions. Intelligent and emotive, One Day does set a high standard: live artists could think about how skilled technique can enhance intimacy between art and audience; opera could think about how a small scale makes those techniques more accessible.

Meanwhile, Between Atoms and Stars is Steve Slater's return to performance after years of programming (at Tramway) and production management (for Untitled Projects). Slater allows his enthusiasm for space exploration and Joseph Beuys to meet, imagining a world where Beuys has Yuri Gagarin in the gallery alongside him. There's no urgency in the story - Slater slips between childhood memories and the alternative history that frees Gagarin from his untimely death - and sketches out space for future performances rather than establishes a clear purpose.

Sortition  is Adam Scarborough's attempt to advocate the return of a more inclusive government. By the time he admits that he isn't sure that sortition is a good alternative to representative democracy, he has posed as a career politician - all hot air and speaking on behalf of the people - been challenged by his audience in an uncomfortable debate and rolled out a series of thoughts on how politics has been usurped by a particular class.

Like Between Atoms, this comes across as a first draft. It comes back to the problem of Arches Live - which is also its point. Both Slater and Scarborough are taking the chance to try something new, and indulging personal interests, testing their shape for the stage. Yet both suffer from  tentative structure and a lack of precision in their performance. It's clear that Scarborough is frustrated, for example, by the current state of the political system. Unfortunately, his projected solution does not reveal his reasons for his disappointment.

Certainly, these works point to interesting conversations and their weaknesses are more in specifics of performance than ambition or ideas. It is how these conversations are framed that is important - something I struggled to do in my own performances at previous festivals.

Here is my crime...

Although I frequently claim that the critic cannot be objective, I still find it difficult to identify my own subjectivity. Having now written a preview for The List and a review of Crime and Punishment, I am just about able to see a sliver of the preconception that I am bringing to Dominic Hill's direction of Chris Hannan's adaptation.

My first question for Hill offers a small clue: I am quite clearly attached to the original. I am torn between my respect for Hill's previous Citizens' directions (Beckett, Shakespeare and Pinter all delivered precisely and respectfully, but with flair) and my fear that adapting an already famous novel feeds into a theatre culture that already has too many repeats.

GKV: How do you feel about doing adaptations of the stage of a novel that has a strong reputation? In a way, it is a shift from your usual approach of taking great scripts and giving them a new vigour: my assumption is that there is something about C and P that made you go for it...

DH: I've always loved the theatricality of the novel - the characters, the dramatic scenes that Dostoevsky creates, the story, the interior monologues of Raskolnikov. It seemed right for the stage. And it doesn't feel like a departure for me - in fact a fusion: a classic story given contemporary relevance as well as being a new play.

Hill put my fears at rest (and the news that there would be live Orthodox psalms sung on stage swung me further behind the production). But my follow up question gets to the heart of my problem.

GKV: The release says that it has a modern relevance, and I guess that Crime never goes out of fashion, but I am wondering whether Dostoevsky's angle, which is in this slightly unfashionable Christian existentialist mode, makes the moral impact of the play more compromised in the more secular twenty-first century. How do you relate its values and (fairly austere) understanding of C and P to more contemporary ideas?

DH: For me its a story about a man's reintegration into society, about the need for society: no man is an island et c. And about compassion and valuing life, regardless whose life it is. Those themes are encapsulated in a Christian humanism that the story propagates. But whether you're a Christian or not - these are timeless important themes and values that go beyond the confines of any religion and are relevant to any person living in any society.

Even if I don't agree with Hill's assertion that certain values 'go beyond the confines of any religion,' his point is coherent and well-made. It is also supported by Hannan's comments on the Vile Arts' Radio Hour that the conversion experienced by Raskolnikov can be seen in all manner of traditions (he references William Jmaes' Varieties of Religious Experience). And the final scene of the play places this conversion (away from an almost nihilistic atheism towards a more compassionate reading of human life) in a context that is not specifically Christian. Raskolnikov finds his redemption in observing nature and reflecting. This could be pagan, pantheist or even a version of romanticism.

However, that finale was, for me, the least satisfying part of a superb production. The role of Sonya, the prostitute, becomes less important (I suggested that the lack of chemistry between Sonya and Raskolnikov caused this problem). While I am absolutely stand by this - and I don't blame director, actors or author for it- I wonder whether that is my own subjectivity, my resistance to Crime and Punishment as anything other than a Christian parable, that gave me the problem.

For the record, Crime and Punishment is a tour de force - the direction is imaginative and, when taken alongside Hill's King Lear suggests that he is working towards a recognisable style that pays respect to Brecht and the ideals of the Dogme film manifesto. Every cast member works hard, there are many exceptional scenes, especially when the law begins to close in on the idealistic murderer. Hannan respects Dostoevsky's obsession with ideas, and the script has enough philosophy for a month's conversations on issues of justice, freewill, redemption and the meaningless universe.

Even my dissatisfaction is slight. Sonya's character is pretty difficult for a contemporary reader, even in the novel (a Gospel reading sex worker seems to be too symbolic, too forceful a message). In some ways, it even improves my experience: my rejection of both Hill's and Hannan's universality of values clearly exposes my own world view. I don't believe in universal values, or that redemption can come outside of a certain set of religious behaviours. 

Fascinated as I am by my contradictions, I won't follow them up just now. I am content to reveal the possibility that I can be subjective, recognise it but still not take it into account. It could be that this restless self-examination undermines my critical project... I prefer to think not...

Giants in the Forest: The Absurdist Drama

It seems that trains have become the new enthusiasm for theatre-makers: before Robert Dawson Scott's Great Train Race arrives at the Oran Mor, a mysterious performance took place somewhere between Drum Castle and Aberdeen. Using the decaying remains of a platform on the old Deeside line, five actors improvised a brief commentary on the changing landscape of the railway cutting.

Visual theatre, which uses the combined aesthetics of dance and puppetry to focus on the image as the primary vehicle for communication, has achieved an enhanced status thanks to the work of manipulate or Scottish company Tortoise in a Nutshell. Yet the use of masks in this production, Ghosts of Factories and Commuters, owes as much to the Giant Heads situated around the country as to more theatrical styles. Oversized and largely silent, three masked beings sit on the edge of the platform and observe not the improvised skits of the remaining duo (dressed in Lycra cycling gear) but the impromptu audience who have gathered.

The skits themselves are largely irrelevant: one concerns a father telling his son how one day he'll understand the beauty of a steam train, while the son shouts that he like the Advanced Passenger Train better (the irony being that the APT, heralded as the future, was soon discarded by British rail); another addresses the regret of a mother when (presumably the same) son decides that he wants to abandon his career teaching Latin for 'something to do with a paradigm shift.'

But the observation of the Heads is the key. Never distracted by the fuss behind them, they respond only to movements in the audience. Gradually, they become slower, turning slightly towards the left or right. By setting themselves at the centre of the platform, in front of the duo, they become both frame and interruption to the action. Even when the improvisations stop, they remain, breaking the traditional finale and stretching the performance beyond its boundaries.

There's an echo of the theatre of cruelty here - the refusal to signal the end of the show, trapping the audience in place. But more importantly, they realign the nature of the audience's attention. Not longer is the bustle, the script or the action the point. Instead, the image is the thing, the lack of movement, the calm.

There are moments when they appear to be on the point of talking - yet they stay silent. Meaning is not presented, but seems to dangle behind their eyes. Like a painting, or an installation, Ghosts demands attention without rewarding it.

A Night at A&E @ Victoria Hospital

Although it has the length of an early twentieth century interpretation of Chekov - and the language might as well be in Russian - A Night At AandE ends with an interlude of intimate physical theatre that might even make Red Bastard stutter. Divided into three distinct phases (The Minor Injury Clinic, The Waiting and The Cubicle), A Night at AandE has been refined over fifty years - experimental versions were staged during the Second World War, and the current version was heavily defined by the agit-prop performance of the 1980s in response to Conservative economics - it stands as one of British Theatre's defining runs: as persistent as The Mousetrap, and as predictable as Macbeth.

Its attraction is perhaps in the rotating cast of characters. The claim that 'all life is here' might be spurious, yet the current line-up does reflect Scotland's distinctive multi-cultural identity). The receptionist, who has provided much of the dramatic tension in earlier versions, is now doubled up. However, the decision to encase her behind bullet proof glass shifts her from the Kafkaesque harridan of the 1960s version to a more vulnerable presence.

Ricky, waiting on his daughter, has become more important: his haggard appearance, home-made tattoos and swigs from a blue plastic bag mark him out as an outsider. The smart Asian business man, and the young couple sitting in comfortable silence, provide a marked contrast to Ricky's wired anxiety and, ultimately,  the climatic formal agon.

A Night At AandE is one of the earliest examples of immersive theatre - its influence on Punchdrunk or You Me Bum Bum Train is obvious. But where much performance is contact to make this immersion the focus - sometimes reverting to a simple experiment in style - A Night proposes that this immersion is merely a tool towards a great appreciation of the central theme. Traditional productions emphasise the irony of the human intelligence, so limitless and free, being contained within a frail body. 1973's edition (subtitled Mummy Told You Not To Touch The Iron) referenced Beckett's Godot by expanding The Waiting to four hours - the audience shivering on a bed in a corridor.

2013's interpretation subtly incorporates current anxiety about immigration. When Ricky launches into his racist tirade, the script is predictable (they are 'coming over here to use our NHS') and hackneyed: the quality of his language, however, undercuts any possibility of sympathy. Having built Ricky up as the plucky outsider (drunk but polite, and evincing a convincing concern for his daughter), he is suddenly revealed as the villain. His statement is made all the more ignorant when the hero of the third phase is revealed as a female Asian doctor.

This play is perhaps one that most people are happy to ignore - like a local attraction, its omnipresence can blur its fundamental importance. Fortunately, the new cast, and the current director, have discovered that its essential meditation on the nature of health and sickness in a universe apparently governed by chance can be adapted to examine the underbelly of contemporary values.

Critical Ratings

I am starting the new year (that is to say, the new academic year) with a commitment to making my critical intentions clear. This blog will continue to broadcast four types of criticism. I'll even mark the type up in the labels.

Type O: Traditional Criticism (reviews, previews, interviews - the sort of thing you can get less personal versions of by reading a proper newspaper or magazine)

Type A: Churnalism (press releases, either with or without my sardonic comments. Again,you can get this in proper newspapers, although I tend to identify it rather than pretend that the press release is either my own work or the genuine research of scientific scholars)

Type AB: Experimental Criticism (not available anywhere else, aside from the output of my Young Critics classes - this group can include reviews of events that never happened, a pretty picture based on a show, anything that denies Type O)

Type B: Provocations (rather like one of those columns you get from proper newspaper, except I am less likely to believe a word that I am saying. For best results, please bear in mind the Erisian mantra: 'this is true, in some sense, this is false, in some sense, this is meaningless, in some sense.')

There is also an additional level of grouping: each piece can be RhD positive or negative.

RhD positive: concerned with issues around an event or performance, seeing it within a cultural context. We could call these extroverted.

RhD negative: focuses on the event as an end in itself.

If it lacks a RhD rating, it is most likely all about me.

Let's see how long I remember to put these warnings onto the articles. In addition, please assume that a large minority of articles will include some swearing. After I saw A Respectable Woman Turns to Vulgarity, I decided it was Big and Clever.